Friday, March 25, 2011

For the longest time, Israeli governments have explained their resistance to Palestinian statehood by pointing to the Palestinians’ and the Arab world’s democracy deficit.

The dishonesty of that explanation has now been exposed to even the most credulous by the reaction of Israel’s government to the democratic revolutions sweeping the region. We are now told by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his government that the overthrow of Tunisia’s and Egypt’s rulers and the challenges to other regional autocrats, whose regimes provided Israel with a certain stability by repressing forcefully popular Arab anger over Israel’s occupation policies, no longer allows Israel to accede to risky “concessions” that a peace accord entails.

So that while until now it was the region’s democratic deficit that supposedly prevented Israel from ending its occupation, now it is the region’s surfeit of democracy that stands in its way.

It is hard to believe there is today even a single head of state anywhere who still does not understand that Israel’s settlement project in the West Bank—secretly encouraged, financed and protected by successive Israeli governments and the IDF—never had a purpose other than to secure permanent Israeli control of Palestine from the Mediterranean to the Jordanian border. Even Chancellor Angela Merkel, who not so long ago pledged Germany’s unflagging support for Israel’s quest for security, recently told Netanyahu that no one can any longer believe anything he says about Israel’s interest in peace.

It is therefore hard to understand those who believe that the democracy revolutions in the region are a reason to urge Israelis and Palestinians to resume direct talks. Direct talks have not been resisted by Netanyahu, for they have served as an ideal cover for the continued expansion of the settlements—falsely holding out the promise that the controversy over the settlements will be resolved as soon as agreement is reached and a border has been set. So why waste time arguing about a settlement freeze now?

But the border is the one subject that Netanyahu refuses to discuss in these direct talks. If he were to disclose where he intends to draw that border, his intention to retain control over the entire West Bank and prevent the creation of a viable and sovereign Palestinian state would be exposed for all to see. Instead, Netanyahu speaks of a solution consistent with Israel’s security, which in his conception of that term cannot accommodate a Palestinian entity that is not fully under Israel’s control.

Unfortunately, Netanyahu has been aided and abetted in his deceptions by the U.S., for the Obama administration refused to endorse terms of reference that identify the 1967 border as the starting point of negotiations. The inescapable implication of that refusal is that, for all practical purposes, the Obama administration accepts the Likud’s definition of the occupied territories as “disputed territories,” to which Israel has as much a claim as the Palestinians do. Imagine what the U.S. would say to the Palestinians if they were to refer to any part of Israel as “disputed territory” to which they too have a claim.

It is not that President Obama is unaware of what Netanyahu is up to. But rather than calling a spade a spade, his administration thought it would work its way around Netanyahu’s deceptions by pressing for a settlement freeze. Instead, it was Netanyahu who worked his way around the freeze.

The lesson to be learned from the serial failures of America’s peace initiatives is that they cannot be based on a lie. We cannot pretend to believe Netanyahu’s recently announced acquiescence to a two-state solution if we are not prepared to hold his feet to the fire when it comes to the issue of the 1967 border. Our recent veto of the UN resolution condemning the settlements was so shameful not only because it helped Israel continue its settlement project but because it abetted Netanyahu’s lie that he can be for peace even if he rejects Palestinians’ rights on their side of the 1967 border.

There is no better time for a resort to truth-telling than now, when citizens in countries neighboring Israel are risking their lives in the hundreds and thousands to put an end to the lies of dictatorial “security” regimes that have denied them their rights and their very humanity.

The truth the U.S. needs to tell Netanyahu and his government is not that they must return to meaningless peace talks, but that international law and previous agreements do not allow Israel to acquire territory beyond the 1967 border without Palestinian consent. They must be told that their insistence that Palestinians must wait a generation or two, if not longer, before they will be ready for statehood is indistinguishable from the insistence of Arab dictators that they must remain in power because their people cannot be trusted to rule themselves—and equally repugnant to America’s values.

Henry Siegman, President of the U.S./Middle East Project, is a non-resident visiting professor at the Sir Joseph Hotung Middle East Program at the School of Oriental and African Studies of the University of London and a consultant to the Norwegian Peacebuilding Centre.

Friday, March 18, 2011

UNITED NATIONS — Sean Penn and Robert De Niro joined stars who appeared at the UN headquarters for the US premiere of a contested movie on the Middle East conflict that Israel tried to get cancelled.

Penn, De Niro, Josh Brolin and Steve Buscemi on Monday turned out to support award-winning American-Jewish director Julian Schnabel at the premiere of "Miral," the story of two Palestinian women after the creation of Israel in 1948.

The Israeli mission to the UN had said that showing the movie in the UN General Assembly hall was "clearly a politicized decision" that "shows poor judgment and a lack of even-handedness."

But UN General Assembly president Joseph Deiss of Switzerland turned down the Israeli request to cancel the event. A spokesman said Deiss hoped that showing the film would "contribute" to a settlement in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

Schnabel, who was awarded the best director at Cannes in 2007 for "The Diving Bell and the Butterfly," praised the UN decision at the start of the film and called his film a "cry for peace."

The film, with Indian actress Freida Pinto of "Slumdog Millionaire" fame in the lead role, is based on an autobiographical novel by Palestinian journalist Rula Jebreal that traces the Arab-Israeli from a Palestinian perspective.

Like Jebreal, the lead character Miral grows up in an orphanage in East Jerusalem set up by a socialite from a wealthy Palestinian family, who one morning in 1948 came across 55 children who escaped a village taken over by radical Jewish militants.

Adapted with the author, Schnabel's film traces the lives of the two women from the

Why I fail to be impressed by the wails emanating from the religious right, in four points

The strange call for denunciation: My colleague, Dimi Reider, wrote a sensitive post , calling upon leftist activists to denounce the massacre in Itamar. A list of leftist organizations – from Peace Now to Rabbis for Human Rights – have already done so, as did the Bil’in Popular Committee against the Wall.

I must say I find this demand strange. It plays straight into the hands of the right- wingers who say the leftists are responsible for the Palestinian struggle; it dances awkwardly with Ariel’s mayor Ron Nachman’s mad waltz on the blood, in which he demanded the left be investigated for its alleged participation in the massacre. As if someone has to earnestly explain he objects to the slaughtering of infants; as if you have to explain you truly support a heavy punishment for the perpetrators, assuming they are caught and legally convicted. A denunciation is, in its way, participation in the all-too-Israeli orgy of victimization we’ve seen since yesterday morning, and your role is that of the demon who has seen the light and begs for forgiveness. No, thanks. Not from the settlers.

The Beasts: When I woke up yesterday morning and read about the massacre, there already were reports about settlers’ reprisals, pogroms which the IDF, as usual, did not stop. Were one to use the IDF’s logic, all of the settlements should be have been put under curfew as soon as the massacre took place, to prevent acts of vengeance: After all, after Baruch Goldstein carried out his massacre in the Cave of the Patriarchs, the IDF put the Palestinians under curfew, precisely for this reason. The IDF proved, once more, it either incapable or unwilling to defend the majority of the residents of the West Bank, contrary to its duty under international law.

The leaders of the settlers went into a seizure, challenging each other to be more ruthless (Hebrew). The prize goes, as usual, to the representative of Kahane and Rabbi Wolfa in the Knesset, Michael Ben Ari: “I call upon the government to carry out a ‘price tag’ [euphemism for pogrom – YG] and expel the residents of the village from which the murderers emerged, and to demolish the village and build in its place apartments for young couples of army veterans.” In short, Ben Ari wants a Lidice-like collective punishment. MK Zevulun Orlev, supposedly more moderate then Ben Ari, blamed the government for the massacre – the usual tactic of the settlers, from the 1970s onwards – and also demanded a ‘price tag’ operation.

The government rushed last night, several hours after the end of the Sabbath, to accept those settler demands, and announced it will build 500 new housing units in the settlements. This wasn’t enough for Interior Minister Eli Yishai, who demanded the price (the price tag?) to be “a thousand apartments per child.”

We’ve heard much about the bottomless monstrosity of the Palestinians who carried out the terrorist attack. What shall we say, then, of the humanity of people who measure the lives of children in acres and real estate? A teenage girl is good enough for a three-room apartment, but an infant – that’ll cost you a whole villa. And, again: This isn’t new. This is how the settlers have operated for decades. Every body is, as far as they are concerned, the equivalent of real estate. They used to call it “a proper Zionist response”: Perhaps a better name would be “construction for cadavers.”

What can you say about a public that moves so speedily from mourning to organized violence to the demand of ransom? I lived in Greater Tel Aviv when it was the preferred target for suicide bombers. Twice, all that stood between me and death was a delay of ten minutes. I never even considered the idea of grabbing the nearest Palestinian, burning his property, or beating him up. And most Israelis were just like me. We took the attacks on the chin, gritted our teeth, and kept ourselves from whining. The settlers, on the other hands, have gone native. It used to be Palestinians who brandished bloodied Israeli bodies; now it’s the settlers who do so. Things being what they are, I have a hard time accepting their demands that I join them in mourning. So sorry, you have besmirched it – and in record time.

Demons: The Israeli media preferred treating the murderers of the Fogel family as human-shaped monsters. The record was broken by Gilad Sharon, the shady son of the former prime minister, writing in Yediot. According to Sharon (Hebrew), “You can put a mask on the Palestinian wild beast, such as a speaker who speaks fluent English. You can put it in a three-piece suit and a silk tie. But once in a while – when the moon is born, when a raven defecates on the head of a howling jackal, or when the pita-bread with za’atar (hyssop) has gone wrong, the beast feels this is its night, and out of a primal instinct it goes ambushing its prey.” And to think that Netanyahu has the gall to speak of “Palestinian incitement.” President Peres brayed that “this is an act showing the lack of humanity, and no religion or faith in the world allows such acts of horror.” Peres apparently has not read the new bestseller in the settlements, “Torat Hamelech,” which not only allows those acts of horror but actively promotes them, according to the teaching that the commandment ‘though shalt not murder’ applies only to a Jew who murders a Jew.

There are, of course, no two-legged beasts; there only humans, and most of them can rationalize just about anything. The person who popularized the term “two legged beasts” in Hebrew was Prime Minister Menachem Begin, who dispatched the Israeli air force to bomb Beirut indiscriminately. The Lebanon War of 1982 cost the Lebanese no less than 17,000 dead (this number does not include the number of Palestinian and Syrian fighters killed, estimated at 9,798). The total sum of Israeli dead from terrorism since the creation of Israel did not, at that time, exceed 500. Begin, one of the more decent prime ministers we’ve had, had no qualms at killing 34 Lebanese civilians for each Israeli dead.

Hold on! How dare you compare the two? Is there any Israeli, who would kill a Palestinian child? Of course there is: You only need a bit of memory. The Bat ‘Ayin Underground (Hebrew) tried to activate a cart bomb next to a Palestinian girls’ school. Its members were acquitted of the killing of eight other Palestinians, one of them a child (then who did kill them? the case were never closed). Two of the Bat ‘Ayin conspirators were sentenced to 15 years’ imprisonment, another was sentenced to eight years, and two others received two years’ imprisonment each. The security coordinator of the Hadar Beitar settlement, Nahum Korman, was convicted of the killing of a 10 year-old Palestinian child, Hilmi Shusha, after hitting him on the head with the butt of his pistol. Korman was sentenced to six months of community service (!). Pinchas Wallerstein, one of the mainstays of the settler movement, chased a Palestinian boy, Rabbah Rhanem Ahmed, whom he claimed threw stones at his car, and shot him dead. Naturally – Wallerstein is a Jew and a settler – he was not charged with murder, but with manslaughter, was convicted of wrongful causing of death, and atoned for his actions with a mere four months of community service.

Korman and Wallerstein, and to a lesser extent the men of the Bat ‘Ayin group, were embraced by their communities. Turns out that if you’re a Jew who shoots a Palestinian child in the back, or bashes his head in with a pistol, or just try to blow him to kingdom come with his classmates, you’re not a two-legged beast; you’re a pillar of the community.

Such are the joys: It’s not easy to remember the last time Binyamin Netanyahu danced such a jig on spilled blood. I think it was after the attack on the number five bus in Tel Aviv, during the Rabin government. Then, Netanyahu blamed the government for the attack. Naturally, that’s not how he spins it today.

Netanyahu has finally found his excuse to stall forever, and he’s going to squeeze this lemon for all it’s worth. Now he can avoid the hated duty of yet another hollow policy speech. There was a massacre! We’re saved! Once more Israel proves it is a peace refusenik: If there are no terror attacks, there’s no reason to speak to the Palestinians; if there are any, of course, we surely can’t talk to them.

There is only once viable way to end the conflict: Non-violent Palestinian resistance. It drives Israel crazy.

Tuesday, March 01, 2011

Sheil Dawani is considered a foreigner, having been born in Nablus, while the Anglican cathedral and offices are in East Jerusalem. Without a visa, in theory he can be arrested and deported at any time. Appeal already submitted to an administrative tribunal could have the negative effect of giving reason to the government.

Jerusalem (AsiaNews) - Israel’s Interior Ministry has revoked the permit for the Anglican Bishop in Jerusalem, The Rt Revd Suheil Dawani, to live in Jerusalem, and has refused requests to reinstate it, in spite of protests by Anglican authorities in the West specifically the United States.

The Bishop is a native of the Holy Land and has spent most of his life and ministry here, but cannot obtain either citizenship or legal residence in Israel, since he was born in Nablus, i.e. in the West Bank, which has been under Israeli occupation since 1967, but has not been annexed to Israel. East Jerusalem, on the other hand, where the Anglican Cathedral and Diocesan offices are situated, was also occupied at the same time, but Israel annexed it and considers it part of its national territory (although no other country in the world recognizes this annexation). Therefore, Bishop Dawani is considered by Israel to be a foreigner who can only visit – let alone live in – East Jerusalem with a special permit, which the Israeli authorities can either grant or deny at their sole discretion. In fact, even the original Palestinian inhabitants of East Jerusalem, and their descendants, are considered by Israel to be foreigners who are no more than possessors of a residence permit, which Israel can revoke.

Since the Bishop has of course remained at his post, in Jerusalem, without the permit, he could be arrested at any moment, be put on trial for being in Israel illegally, be sentenced to a prison term – or simply be forcibly removed from Jerusalem.

This situation is causing deep worry to all the Churches in the Holy Land. Because of the representative function of the Churches in the Holy Land, on behalf of the world- wide Christian communities, and because of various personnel needs, a large portion of the bishops, clergy and religious serving in Jerusalem and elsewhere, come from other countries. Israel does not allow them to acquire citizenship or even legal residence, and they can only remain in Israeli territory in virtue of visas that need to be renewed every year or two years – at the Government’s sole discretion. Indeed, as has been made public by news reports over the years, the issue of entry visas and residence for Catholic clergy and religious is a priority item on the agenda of the negotiations between the Holy See and the State of Israel, right from their beginning in 1992 – with no agreement yet. So the predicament of the Anglican Bishop is being watched closely by all the Churches here.

The Bishop has now applied for an Israeli administrative court to intervene, but the prospects for his lawsuit are far from certain. As a matter of general principle, the Government is free to issue or to withhold the kind of permit he needs, without giving detailed reasons, except essentially raisons d’état. There is an opinion, too, that turning to the court is a mistake, since an unfavourable decision by the court (the likelier outcome perhaps) would give the Government the cover of law. It might have been better for him, some say, to rely instead on rousing Western public opinion, in the name of religious freedom and natural justice. Time will tell.

Sam Bahour - Photo

About Me

Sam Bahour is a Palestinian-American based in Al-Bireh/Ramallah, Palestine and is managing partner of Applied Information Management (AIM), which specializes in business development with a niche focus on start-ups and providing executive counsel.
Bahour was instrumental in the establishment of two publicly traded firms: the Palestine Telecommunications Company (PALTEL) and the Arab Palestinian Shopping Center. He is currently an independent director at the Arab Islamic Bank, advisory board member of the Open Society Foundations’ Arab Regional Office, and completed a full term as a Board of Trustees member and treasurer at Birzeit University. In addition to his presidential appointment to serve as a general assembly member of the Palestine Investment Fund, Palestine’s $1B sovereign wealth fund, Bahour serves in various capacities in several community organizations, including co-founder and chairman of Americans for a Vibrant Palestinian Economy, board member of Just Vision in New York, board member and policy adviser at Al-Shabaka, the Palestinian Policy Network, and secretariat member of the Palestine Strategy Group.